The Love Beat

Twenty-nine-year-old Samantha Stein is the eldest daughter of Sire Music president Seymour Stein, the man who discovered Madonna, the Talking Heads and the Ramones. She counts singer Elton John, actor Bill Paxton and director Brett Ratner as close family friends.

“I was quite a sophisticated 12-year-old,” Ms. Stein said. “I grew up not waiting on lines at clubs, and I’ve been my father’s escort to many a Grammy.”

But like many jaded children of Manhattan, Ms. Stein decided to gradually wean herself off “the scene.” She got to know Rodger Wells, 32, a vice president at the Manhattan brokerage firm Gruntal & Co., at a small weekly party of friends who gathered to watch The Sopranos on HBO. As each Sunday showing approached, Ms. Stein realized that she was more eager to see Mr. Wells than Tony Soprano.

“It’s too bad you don’t have a dog,” she told him flirtatiously over the phone one day, “’cause then you could take it for a walk and stop by my place.”

“I just got one,” he said.

Ba-da- bing !

Soon after their first kiss, Mr. Wells scored major points with the Stein family by showing up with Samantha’s mother’s favorite flowers, Casablanca lilies, on her birthday. A few months later, he took Mr. Stein père out to lunch at Campagna to ask for his daughter’s hand.

“Do you have a brother for my other daughter?” cracked Dad.

Mr. Wells bought a 4.7-carat diamond-on-platinum ring and hid it in an upper kitchen cabinet, one which Ms. Stein, who is five feet tall, couldn’t reach. He clambered up while she was making a cup of tea, and then dropped to one knee and proposed. “Yes, yes, yes!” she screamed. And then joined him on the floor.

The couple will wed at Cipriani 42nd Street on May 19. They had one of their first dates there, during an Elton John Breast Cancer Research Foundation benefit concert.